go die in new jersey

To those who may not have been active online in the late 2000's, please note that there is likely to be content in the following media that has aged poorly. I'm not here to condone anything, but it's been 16 years so please do not pester anybody mentioned.

Also to be quite honest, I've yet to find anything here that isn't incredibly tame by 2008/9 standards.

Okay so I kind of mislead you. This page is less about Castle of Nations or Law of Talos as a whole, but first and formost a fanpage for Karl specifically.

Some weird teenage girls from 2010 had Jeff the Killer as their questionable fiction serial killer crush. I had this thing! Though I was definitely far from the only one, he was what I'd call a Deviantart Sexyman. An ancestor species to their tumblr descendants.

For those (understandably) unaware, Karl was a character created by a deviantart user by the username, unknown-person. Made for a never realised story called, Castle of Nations.

Although CoN was never produced in its intended form, several of its characters gained cult followings through UP's participation in Original Character Tournaments.

OCTs were (and still are, if you're willing to look hard enough) contests where artists and writers pit their characters and work into a series of rounds. The winners of each round would then be allowed into the following bracket, and their entry would become canon to the overall story. Usually, artists would enter in comic format. However every now and again someone would go the animation route, included unknown-person.

UP had previously already won an OCT (Endzone) with their character, Climber. By creating minutes long, fully voice-acted animated shorts, which I highly recommend watching for yourself.

Karl is from UP's second OCT, Law of Talos (run by Sins-Of-Angels). A steampunk-themed fighting tournament spurred on by the promise of a wishing machine.

Karl did not win in the end, but that wasn't for a loss in quality after Endzone. In fact, the improvement in polish and quality is immediately noticeable. The judges simply preferred how the other contestant wrote the story's ending. Which is completely understandable! It was a fantastic finale, which I think better prioritised LoT's overarching storyline and gave shine to a few of the already disqualified characters. It of course, also gave Karl a fitting end. Both metaphorically and in a Karl Fucking Dies way.

All of the winner's (I believe they went by blacklilian, though their account is gone) entries can be found in this archive.

How to Watch

All of Unknown-Person's LoT comics and animations are available on their Deviantart page. Even if you don't have an extension to watch the flashes on your browser, the swf files are free to download. There are several ways to view them after that. If you want to export your own video files from there, an easy way to do that is using Swivel. A free program provided by Newgrounds.

Note that these are interactive flashes with comics and extras attached, so viewing the animations alone on youtube will cost you a bit of context for each match.

Biography text from Karl's Reference Sheet description.

Introducing another Castle of Nation's character, a psychopath made of synthetic polymer.

Name: Karl. Just Karl.

Occupation: decoration of the Pirate's cave, spy, informer and assassin in his spare time.

Age: less than the scars make him look like.

Height: about 5'10" (175 cm).

Weight: heavy.

Likes: Arma, playing the violin, classic songs (Tchaikovsky and Bach, mostly), starry nights, challenges, chaos and destruction.

Dislikes: humans, mirrors (or any surface with a good reflection), high places, taking things seriously.

Abilities: His body works similar to Climber's, but since he's made of a different material, he has a few "exemptions", being the most obvious the big strength. His right cross can break a jaw, but he avoids hand-to-hand combat for his limbs may crack. Without Arma, he'd probably be quite in a trouble...

Name:	Karl. Just Karl.
Occupation:	decoration of the Pirate's cave, spy, informer and assassin in his spare time.
Age:	less than the scars make him look like.
Height:	about 5'10" (175 cm).
Weight:	heavy.
Likes:	Arma, playing the violin, classic songs (Tchaikovsky and Bach, mostly), starry nights, challenges, chaos and destruction.
Dislikes:	humans, mirrors (or any surface with a good reflection), high places, taking things seriously.
Abilities:	His body works similar to Climber's, but since he's made of a different material, he has a few "exemptions", being the most obvious the big strength. His right cross can break a jaw, but he avoids hand-to-hand combat for his limbs may crack. Without Arma, he'd probably be quite in a trouble...

Karl is, roughly resumed, the kind of guy who seems to summon up every possible virtue known by our current society. Gentle, sympathetic, with a charming talk and polite manners...

... until you find two or three dismembered bodies in his wardrobe.

His past is as uncertain as the words that comes out from his mouth, but all that hate and disgust must have an origin.

Karl's Story / A short summary of what we know

This section will comprise mostly of spoilers.

I'm going to being following the Timeline that includes Law of Talos. Even though it wasn't intended as canon to Castle of Nations proper, it's the most complete story we have, and what got most people invested in his character to begin with.

Karl was a display statue in the pirate-themed section of a themepark called Castle of Nations. At some point the Castle in the center acheived the power to bring the exibits in the park to life. Including Karl.

Some undefined amount of time later, he heard a human woman playing the violin. She'd been tresspassing into the park late at night to find a quiet place to practice. Karl loved the music and listened in. At this point in time, he had no ill-will towards humans, and his charismatic and friendly demeaner was a lot more genuine.

Eventually Karl was found out, and the woman, named Rachel, befriended him and taught him to play the violin. His most treasured passtime. Karl started falling in love with Rachel, and it seemed like his feelings might have been returned. At some point another statue from the pirate area tried to warn him that getting involved with a human was a bad idea.

I don't know what happens next in the timeline, all we have are these flashing images of the event.

ID: Karl smiling and playing the violin in a warm light, Rachel smiling and looking in his direction, Karl's violin, which transitions out of the happy memory with three slashes of black that mirror Karl's modern-day scars.

- flashback from Vs Mizuno entry

ID: Karl's POV of a mystery man pointing a gun at him, the gun goes off, Karl looking confused and frightened, Rachel with her hand over her mouth and looking concerned, Karl's hand is shot clean off, it's the hand he's holding his violin in, Karl's violin broken on the ground.

- flashback from Vs Annie and Professor entry

Interesting little details are that Karl gets shot in his now greyed-out hand, and the myster man is clearly wearing the jacket Karl wears in the present day. The first set of flashbacks where we see something slash over his vision, was provoked by Karl seeing his own reflection. The second was triggered by having a gun pointed at him.

The next piece of the timeline is a flashback in one of LoT's comics, where Karl speaks to Castle (oh yeah, the Castle in Castle of Nations is sentient and kinda the boss?) about why he can't leave the park. Castle tellis him that humans could never accept their existence, and Karl agrees. Except instead of hiding away, he recommends killing all humans instead. Importantly, he's missing a hand and Castle points out that there's human blood inside his hollow wrist.

"What have you done?"

So yeah, whatever the context, Karl's hand and face were permanently damaged, and he felt so betrayed he killed the man and (most likely) Rachel. Maybe Rachel could have gotten away, but it's unlikely.

Then we have the main events of Karl's arc in LoT, which I recommend to read and watch yourself. I'm not going to summarise the whole thing.

But tldr: Karl finds an ad for a fighting tournament, with a wishing machine as the prize. He fights in the tournament, violently winning most of his battles, until he's pitted against Annie and The Professor, where the paths branch in two directions.

UP's intended ending, and Blacklilian's canon ending.

unknown-person's ending:

Karl kills The Professor and fights with Climber. Unfortunately for him he's too slow and the wishing machine goes off. He runs out of energy and is killed by a very vengeful Annie.

Role Credits!

Blacklilian's ending:

If you don't want to download the archive, read the winning round yourself, here!

Some time later, UP was asked on tumblr about what happened to Karl next.

Copy of the Post:

superbunnybun asked you: According to the winning entry of LoT, Karl went back home having turned human when revived. (Still unsure how that worked) What do you think he did in this new form?

What do I think? Uh, are you sure you would like to know that?

Hmm…

Well, okay…

Turning any Castle of Nations resident into a human is impossible. The Castle of Nations’ magic has one main weakness, and that is directly related with human beings. If a necromancer or wizard or anything pushed Karl’s soul into a living body, it’d be like shaking a bottle filled with oil and water: his essence would be gradually repelled and separated from the body it resides in, and he’d drop dead within a day, hours even.

So… he died.

ID: Karl lying in the sand outside the city. Climber asks about his body, and Mister Jack assured a human isn't their responsibility.

Which is unfortunate, I suppose, but neither miss Lillian’s nor my entries are canon so that’s irrelevant to the Castle of Nations storyline

End Quote.

There was never a happy ending for Karl in Law of Talos. Oh well!

More Archives and Other Entries

If you want an approachable summary of the canon events of Law of Talos, I highly reccommend JPR's video, which lists out every participant and goes over every single character and event in the winning timeline. Including entries that are hard to find or no longer accessible through deviantart.

This is one of those cases where a summary video for a piece of art is legitimately warranted. As most of it is very difficult to navigate after 15+ years of abandonment and deletion. They even got permission from one artist who locked archives of their deleted entries behind a paywall (fair enough).

A lot of people took part in Law of Talos, so I cannot overstate how much work it must've taken to do this. Though it doesn't touch any of the troves of non-canon entries. I suggest investigating those on your own if you have the time. I'm personally quite fond of Del's entries against Karl and subsequent sneak peak for what would've happened if UP had lost.

Also one of the artists who was pitted against Karl just went fuck-it and did a live-action parody sketch. I'd seen screenshots of the person playing Karl back in the day but I thought they were just some random cosplayer? Somehow I only found out it was an entry like, a month before writing this.

This is still publically available, but since this person purposefully purged their other entries, I'm not going to link it here.

Also did you know that Zeurel was in Law of Talos? You can tell in places that people really wanted a 1v1 between him and UP's but sadly that never happened. You can find Zeural's entries here.